5 Absurd Things We’ve Launched Into Space

Back in February 2018, Elon Musk surprised the world as he revealed his old red Tesla had been sent into space.

Although a bizarre stunt for publicity, it seems Mr Musk wasn’t the first to come up with such a bonkers space journey for a little bit of spotlight.

It turns out that there are quite a few stories of objects and animals being sent into orbit, albeit for a range of different reasons. The previous ‘stunts’, or experiments, didn’t quite catch the same level of publicity as SpaceX and Tesla did with their space car. But this is probably due to advances in technology. In 1957, the story of Laika was on the telly and perhaps covered in a few selected news magazines. In 2018, Elon Musk’s car was on Twitter, live TV, online newspapers, in blogs, traditional media and even on Instagram.

The stunt gave us some food for thought here at Caledonian Couriers, and we decided to look into what else has been sent into space over the years and for what reason.

Lego figurines

In 2011 when NASA launched its Juno spacecraft to learn about the planet Jupiter three little Lego figurines were onboard.

Onboard the spacecraft was a figurine of the king of the Roman gods which Jupiter was named after, one of his wife Juno, and one of astronomer Galileo Galilei.

Through this collaboration with Lego, NASA was hoping to inspire more children to be interested in science and technology. It worked for us!

Can I order a Pepperoni pizza, please?

Back in 2000, Pizza Hut delivered the first (and last?) pizza into space.

The pizza was sent to the International Space Station onboard a resupply rocket, and the Russian astronaut Yuri Usachov was the lucky recipient.

The Americans didn’t get a piece of the pizza, because NASA has a policy against advertisements on their spacecraft. Too bad ‘murica!

So how did they get a pizza there without it going bad? Instead of using pepperoni they made it with salami, as that has a significantly longer shelf life. On top of that, they added extra spices, and extra salt and pepper – as the taste buds are weakened when you’re in space.

Allegedly, this stunt cost over one million dollars. It better have been the best pizza in the universe!

Sea Monkeys

Sea Monkeys, also known as brine shrimp, are commonly known as an entry level ‘pet’. Although not the most exciting of the bunch.

What you probably didn’t know is that in 1972, Sea Monkeys were sent into space aboard the Apollo 16 Moon mission test.

Sea Monkeys are notoriously indestructible. They can survive being set on fire, deprived of oxygen and being boiled or chilled at extreme temperatures. The experiment was simple, the resilient creatures were onboard the rocket so that the international space stations could test the impact of cosmic radiation on human astronauts.

Pattie and Chips from Hull

If there’s one thing we love in the UK, it’s a trip to the chippy.

In 2017, a group of local school children carried out an experiment where they had to send up a weather balloon and study the course etc.

They had the genius idea to send along the infamous chips and pattie from their local chip shop in Hull.

Laika the Soviet Space dog

As the space race between the US and Russia really took off, rights and animal welfare took second priority in the late 1950’s.

Laika, a stray Russian dog, was plucked from the street and enjoyed a meteoric rise to fame.

In 1957, after hastily training the little pooch, Laika was blasted into space.

Laika was one of the first animals in space, and the first animal to orbit the earth. Now that’s a good girl!

Follow Us

This message is only visible to admins:Unable to display Facebook posts

Error: (#10) This endpoint requires the 'manage_pages' or 'pages_read_engagement' permission or the 'Page Public Content Access' feature. Refer to https://developers.facebook.com/docs/apps/review/login-permissions#manage-pages and https://developers.facebook.com/docs/apps/review/feature#reference-PAGES_ACCESS for details.Type: OAuthExceptionCode: 10Click here to Troubleshoot.